


Gold Masks

by courtmagician (gold_on_ice)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Implied Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, M/M, Most characters in the tags are just mentioned, References to Depression, Slight Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 17:33:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12258906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gold_on_ice/pseuds/courtmagician
Summary: Viktor Nikiforov had everything. He was considered practically a God on the ice, always sporting a dazzling smile across his face and entertaining everyone around him as he was supposed to do. Everything was okay, it really was.Only sometimes he would feel this sadness he couldn't quite place. But why should it matter anyway?





	Gold Masks

**Author's Note:**

> The first version of this one-shot was written in Brazilian Portuguese for a challenge that goes on once a month on a Facebook group. For this prompt we were supposed to write a story based off a favorite song, the song I’ve chosen was “Bravado” by Lorde.
> 
> Despite the lyrics reminding me so much of Viktor’s character, I actually found the meaning of the word “Bravado” also fitting. It means a façade or a mask of excessive courage and/or confidence worn by someone to show bravery and self-assurance to impress other people. Needless to say, it’s all pretense to mask the feelings of uneasiness and fear.  
> I always wanted to explore Viktor’s hypothetical depression so it was a good opportunity to try my hand at it. 
> 
> Also, take into account that this is the first fanfic I’ve written in English (which isn’t my first language) and worked up enough courage to post on AO3, so pardon any misspellings and grammar mistakes.
> 
> On that note, I also need to thank [Close_enough_to_lose](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Close_enough_to_lose/pseuds/Close_enough_to_lose) for all the patience and help, so thank you sososo much! <3

 

 _‘Cause I was raised up to be admired,_  
_to be noticed but when you’re withdrawn,_  
_it’s the closest thing to assault_  
_when all eyes are on you,_  
this _will not do._  
_I’m faking glory, lick my lips,_  
_toss my hair and turn the smile on,_  
_and the story’s brand new,_  
_but I can take it from here._  
_I’ll find my own bravado._

_**Bravado, Lorde** _

****

**_***_ **

****

Viktor Nikiforov. The 28-year-old Russian who had become the Living Legend of Figure Skating with a collection of gold medals that he’d gathered all throughout the years ever since he was sixteen.

Viktor was made of dazzling smiles.

Smiles that came off far too easily, plastered across his face like they belonged there. He was so, so charming.

Although if one paid enough attention they’d see those smiles were never once genuine.

But no one noticed. No one ever notices these things.

While some people looked up to him, hoping that someday they’d be exactly like him; others thought they would beat him one day, hoping to be the person who would throw the king off his feet and take his crown.

_I’ll be like him. One day I’m going to kick him off his pedestal. I’ll be better than him._

Each time Viktor succeeded in winning another competition, it didn’t come off as a surprise to anybody anymore. After a while of competing and winning, no matter how great his efforts might’ve been, no one was bothered by it. It didn’t matter if it was a battle or some sort of private war that he had to conquer each time, day after day, no one paid it any mind.

And even then, Viktor was always, always smiling. So it was only fair to assume that everything was alright with him, he was one of the most decorated skaters of this era and everyone wanted to be just like him.

Viktor never had to face an episode of anxiety. He was always one to receive praise and have the crowd cheering for him no matter what. He always had the warmth of the audience to fuel him up with pride and joy. It was a feeling he’d only ever experienced at the rink when all of the crowd’s eyes were set on him.

In his entire career, Viktor never had moments in which he had slipped as some skaters like Yuuri Katsuki did. Those things happened to others, but never to Viktor.

There had been events that had the entire audience startled. Like that time Jean-Jacques Leroy collapsed on the ice in front of everyone. JJ was another skater that hadn’t been used to failure, just like Viktor.

But it happened. It happened right there, in front of everyone.

People might’ve been inclined to expect something like that from Yuuri Katsuki. Because Yuuri Katsuki was, after all, a skater that everyone knew to struggle with anxiety, before and after competitions. There wouldn’t have been much of a surprise if it had been Yuuri Katsuki who flubbed some jumps and screwed up more than most.

But that was Yuuri Katsuki.

JJ wasn’t like that. People hadn’t been expecting JJ to screw up.

As Viktor watched, he thought that maybe these moments unraveled a naked truth about the people who surrounded others. At that time, Viktor had thought that it seemed a lot more genuine than the pride people showed to someone who had just won.

Just yet another successful achievement, another gold. People only ever cared when others did what was expected from them.

Everyone cheered JJ on in that day. His girlfriend stood up from her seat and had taken the lead, clapping as loud as she could and singing his ridiculous theme song. She had started it without a care in the world if she was making a fool of herself. She just wanted to do something for the person she loved, entirely for the sake of cheering him up. She did it for _his_ sake.

Suddenly, everyone in the crowd followed suit and they all cheered so loud that JJ had tears in his eyes. But those were tears of joy. Viktor had seen the relief and the love that action held. Viktor considered that perhaps one of the most beautiful moments he had ever witnessed on the ice, and he had been around for quite some time, had seen a lot.

At that time, failure seemed to be strangely more rewarding than victory itself.

And that made Viktor feel something he could never identify properly. It felt like some sort of uneasiness pestering him, a weird sensation that he’d something caught in his throat. There was also a tiny hint of irritation mixed between all of that.

Over the years, that feeling only seemed to grow worse, morphing into something that he could only have described as emptiness. It felt as if he was suddenly hollow, and it manifested itself in many different ways.

All throughout his entire career, Viktor watched many of his colleagues commit all kinds of mistakes. From silly ones to ones that brought them to the lowest bottom of the ice pit they’d thrown themselves into. He’d watched many of them get disqualified, devastated and humiliated countless times. The ice was cruel and unforgiving to them. Always to others, but never to Viktor, no.

Watching Yuuri Katsuki break in front of everyone once again had broken his heart. When he was thrown at the bottom of the scoreboard without any mercy, he’d looked so devastated.

Needless to say, he didn’t take any medal home that day.

Another foreign concept to Viktor. Viktor could never fail.

He grew up with people telling him that he had been born to be admired, and that he should make the world notice him. He had been told that he should shine. Perhaps even brighter than the sun, if he could.

Although all eyes would be set on him, admiration was something to be earned. People would be watching as any other audience would, that was a given. But it was entirely up to him whether or not he would be able to hold their gazes for as long as he could and he was meant to do whatever it’d take.

_Glory and fame won’t last a second if you don’t know how to keep it. You need to grasp it and hold onto it, Vitya._

_You belong to the ice, Viktor. Nothing is more important than that._

_Do not think of anything else other than the ice, Vitya._

Yakov used to tell him those things with that stern and low voice of his. In fact, Yakov used to tell Viktor a lot of things. Sometimes his words were harsher and he didn’t bother smoothing them down for his sake.

And Viktor would often smile.

He did so because he learned that smiling was the most efficient way to avoid questions he had no desire to answer. He’d learned that it was also the best way to hide the emptiness and the yearning he felt inside.

_Yearning for what?_

He didn’t know.

And yet, those smiles never once reached his eyes.

He would often ask himself had he, even if just once, failed like Yuuri Katsuki did, would Yakov support him the same way Yuuri’s coach seemed to? Or would he just tell Viktor he had ruined everything? He supposed that would be something he’d never know, because he couldn’t afford the luxury to fail.

He would never be able to taste what failure would be like, nor the comfort that came after.

Would it be sour? Would it be bitter? Would it make him want to bite off his tongue or crawl under a rock and die? Would it leave a permanent stain that would follow him throughout his entire life? Would the tell-tale taste of the salty water people called tears start to spill from his eyes and roll down his cheeks? Would anyone care?

_Would he care?_

Sometimes he didn’t know.

Sometimes Viktor thought he wouldn’t be able to keep winning. He thought the day he’d taste the unknown flavor of failure was yet to come and then he’d be done.

Viktor didn’t know when he had started questioning the life he was leading. The feeling was more a sort of discomfort in the back of his mind and a heavy weight on his chest, but it had never been something he had considered paying much attention.

For one, he had more important things to do. Or at the very least, that was what Yakov would tell him anyway. He would dismiss it with a witty smile and some pleasantry. And people always believed him. After all, he was supposed to be able to deceive people and make them believe in the emotions he wanted them to.

Wasn’t it exactly what he was supposed to do on the ice?

Just act it out and make them believe him?

When Viktor was off the ice, he was usually at his apartment. There weren’t a lot of things for him to do. Sometimes he would start reading a book, although he never reached the end of any book, because they always began to feel dull and meaningless at some point, so he’d just drop it or lose interest.

As he did with a lot of things in every aspect of his life. He would just leave things behind, maybe he would try to convince himself that he would be dealing with them later, but deep down he knew it was unlikely. He knew he would never try; he simply wasn’t good at finishing things he started.

But it didn’t matter.

Sometimes he would crawl off his bed and drag himself to the couch. He would stay there for a while and then come back to his empty bed. He was just tired, it wasn’t important. It wasn’t something that should matter.

And sometimes he would feel _sadness._

Or at least that was what he called that constricting feeling tightening in his chest. It was the same emptiness that pestered him out of the blue, and sometimes even made it feel like the temperature of his apartment had dropped a few degrees colder. He used to hold Makkachin closer at these moments and take a deep breath.

The dog would look at him in confusion and lick his face as if she was licking away an invisible wound. It was a thought that always made Viktor smile, and then question if he should be feeling like that at all.

He had everything. He wasn’t supposed to be feeling like that.

But even so, that dull sentiment wouldn’t go away.

He supposed, as it was with many other things in his life, that this, too, was only a matter of adapting and learning how to live with it. He knew wasn’t feeling the thrill of winning anymore, but it didn’t matter. He would keep doing just that.

However, sometimes it felt like he only did so because he had to. Or because Yakov kept telling him he was the Russian team’s little gold mine.

Regardless of that being a joke, it was still something that made Viktor feel as if he ever dared to stop, everything would come crashing down on him, and Yakov would never look at him the same way again.

Recognition becomes something empty and worthless once the respect and admiration of some very specific people in your life is lost. Viktor thought he would never have become who he was, if it wasn’t for Yakov; for that reason, he never seemed to be able to disappoint him.

Sure he had always given him a hard time by not listening to his advice, always brushing it off with a smile and doing what he wanted anyway, but that only extended to his decisions concerning his routines and his skating style.

Other than that, Viktor did listen to Yakov. Maybe more than he should. It was like a little voice in the back of his mind pointing its accusatory finger to his face and telling him what he should and what he shouldn’t do. It would often tell him all the things that would happen if he ever failed. It wasn’t pretty.

But it shouldn’t matter.

Sometimes it made Viktor wonder if it was really Yakov or if it was a projection of his own self-doubts and his own critical mind telling himself he was not allowed to fail. That he should be perfect, admirable, adorable, praiseworthy. The oh-so-perfect Viktor Nikiforov. Always smiling, always carefree and confident.

_If only they knew…_

But it didn’t matter because no one noticed, and if no one noticed perhaps it wasn’t important.

Even if Viktor’s yearning felt very real and he could say that something was lacking in his life, it didn’t matter. Even this constant and really, really unpleasant discomfort and lack of inspiration and motivation he felt didn’t really matter.

Or it shouldn’t matter.

Sometimes it was hard to keep those fake smiles; they felt strained, almost alien to his face, as if his muscles were acting by memory, moving as they were supposed to, but the emotion just wasn’t there. He couldn’t feel them, he just did what he was expected to.

Sometimes he felt like giving up. Victory sometimes felt as empty as the hole in his heart and he didn’t know where these feelings came from.

But he dismissed it the same way as he always did: smiling.

_It didn’t matter._

Sometimes Viktor spent nights awake, staring at the ceiling and thinking. Tried as he might, he could never get rid of the emptiness that consumed him. Like a little monster eating him away from the inside. Sometimes he would drink until he was drunk enough to forget that feeling, to be able to sleep through an entire night.

And sometimes he cried. He didn’t know why.

There were times that he would the pills Christophe Giacometti had managed to somehow smuggle for him, telling him three were enough to do the trick. Viktor sometimes contemplated the idea of taking more, wondering what would happen if he did so.

He never really gathered enough courage to find out.

He didn’t ask how Christophe had gotten them either, he just accepted them. Sleeping pills were nothing, a lot of skaters used these drugs and no one cared. In reality, no one is giving even a single shit about these things. That is what he’d constantly tell himself as he downed the set of three little pills with a glass of water. They helped, they really did.

He figured that seeing a doctor would be useless, no one sees a doctor just because they can’t sleep for a night or two.

Or for a whole month, for that matter.

It was silly, it really was.

And besides, every day he would show up to practice and his appearance would be as flawless as ever. So of course, no one would be the wiser; no one would concern themselves about something they couldn’t see. It was okay, really. If no one noticed, it meant it wasn’t important, and thus it shouldn’t matter.

If he smiled, no one would ask.

And so he trained until his feet threatened to give in to exhaustion, until he was forced to surrender and allow himself to stop for a moment. Sometimes it was with astonishment that he would listen to Yuri Plisetsky asking if he was alright. Even if Yuri tried to paint his words with that petulant tone filled with his teenage anger, telling him that he was getting old, as his way to mask his concern passing it off as an insult and or another rude comment, it was endearing.

It made Viktor laugh.

Absentmindedly, he noticed how genuine it seemed to be and it made him feel something bloom inside his chest, almost as if that emptiness had been filled for a second, or as if one of the missing pieces of his puzzle had been placed in the void meant for it. 

And just like that, he would be back to practice, but each and every day made him feel like he was running out of time. He wasn’t getting any inspiration. He couldn’t find a way to surprise anyone anymore; that made him feel agitated, uneasy, and by the end of the day, he was feeling restless and frustrated.

Another day had passed and he hadn’t been able to produce anything remotely worthy of a gold medal. To be honest, he hadn’t been sure if what he had done so far could even be even considered worthy of bronze, or if it should earn him a place on the podium at all.

Nothing was original. Nothing seemed good enough.

He kept trying. Trying and failing.

No one seemed to realize that he was failing, or how far down he was falling. Yakov would tell him that both of his programs were enough, that the concept was good and that he’d be able to work with that. The audience would love him no matter what. He never believed him, not even for a second. He wasn’t feeling any of it.

Not the Eros routine, no.

And certainly not any bit of the Agape.

In regards to love, he wasn’t feeling anything at all.

_It didn’t matter. Or it shouldn’t matter._

_(But what if he…)_

It was this shy and quiet whisper in the back of his mind, almost with not enough force to emerge into his consciousness, too weak to even gain any shape or complete itself, but constantly there, a thought that whispered poison into his ears, so quietly that it could be missed.

_(What if he just…)_

He couldn’t imagine a life away from the ice, away from the eyes of the crowd, away from the applause, and the praise, and the approval. As empty as it felt, it was the only thing that kept him going.

_To be admired, to be noticed._

_It shouldn’t matter._

But when the discomfort became too strong, when the restless nights started to cross the thin line between healthy and unhealthy, it made him wonder how things would be when he wasn’t there anymore.

_(What if he just gave up?)_

The forbidden thought dared to complete itself.

And brought along a string of other intrusive little thoughts with it, dragging under the spotlight all the what-ifs, and maybes, and could-have-beens that came biting through his mind.

What would happen when he simply ceases to exist? When Viktor Nikiforov is declared dead to the world, when he’s no longer any of these things people assumed him to be. What would happen when he vanishes from the rinks and from the eyes of the crowd?

_(What if Viktor Nikiforov was already dead?)_

Often, he could find ways to distract himself and keep these thoughts at bay. But every once in a while, he was pestered by the same annoying itching inside of his mind, this little buzzing like a tiny little bee flying around his head, mocking him for his incapacity to kill it only because it was too fast for him.

As fast as time seemed to be.

Even then, it was like something was missing. Something that, rationally, he knew shouldn’t matter, but it was as present as ever. So much, to the point it started to become frustrating that he couldn’t just figure out what that could be, even when sometimes it felt so, so intense that he could almost touch it.

But of course, it shouldn’t matter.

And then suddenly there it was. Viktor was sprawled on his couch with Makkachin comfortable settled on top of him. Viktor contemplated his continuous self-deprecating state, immersed in his loneliness and his sadness, staring at his phone and wondering if he actually needed that thing. He didn’t have much use for it, having no one to talk to, or at least not anyone other than Yakov and Yuri, on occasion.

He was startled when he heard his notification tune go off. A soft piano note he had set. And then it went off again. That was weird. Viktor frowned and slid his fingers across the screen, opening his e-mail account. He had subscribed to most social media and set most of them to notify him when his name was mentioned around the internet.

It was usually Twitter mentions, tribute videos on YouTube with some music from his old routines and videos of himself skating them, all packed together with a message or something. Sometimes they were videos from fans across the world attempting to skate his routines on public ice rinks.

It almost felt like filling up the hole inside his chest and the shallowness of his life. It made his heart flutter every time, but the feeling never lasted for more than ten seconds. It was nice, though, knowing that he could inspire other people, even if he couldn’t find that inspiration for himself anymore.

It didn’t last for enough time to fill the void and take away the emptiness inside. It didn’t help with the constant yearning and with the discomfort he felt. But it was nice. Nice enough to make him at least crack a smile, because it seemed almost genuine.

When he opened _that_ e-mail never once in his life he was able to describe what that made him feel. It was definitely something he had never felt before until that day, that was for sure. Of all things, he wasn’t expecting to feel his heart do a flip inside his chest and attempt to jump out of his throat.

YouTube was packed with endless videos of people attempting to skate routines from his favorite skaters. Viktor’s ones were surely at the top three of the most attempted ones. Some of them seemed promising, lacking the obvious skills that could only be attained with proper training and decent coaching, but they were on the right path, they could probably succeed if they were to ever pursue the sport more seriously.

Others weren’t so great, with clumsy steps and movements that made Viktor worry they would end up hurting themselves on the ice and if that happened, he would probably feel guilty for having indirectly encouraged such thing.

But he did love all of them, no matter what. He appreciated their efforts and he loved each and every single one of them.

However, that video wasn’t from a fan.

That was _Yuuri Katsuki_ skating the Stammi Vicino routine. _His routine._

Yuuri Katsuki had been missing from the skating world for a while like he had vanished from the face of the earth and Viktor assumed he had probably retired albeit there had been no official note from the ISU confirming that.

Viktor and Yuuri Katsuki had a brief interaction at the GPF banquet on the day Yuuri had humiliated himself and had failed miserably.

He showed up to the party anyway, probably under his coach’s orders.

He had downed drink after drink until he had been capable of interacting with all the people present in the room. Viktor thought his presence irradiated light and disseminated warmth. He shone brighter than the sun without even trying. That night, Viktor felt the warmth inside his chest grow the same way it did when he watched his fans doing his routines.

Only at that time, the feeling had lasted for more than ten seconds.

That feeling stayed with him all throughout the night.

When Viktor played the video, he almost had the same feeling coming back to him in waves, filling him up. It was the same comfortable warmth that settled inside his chest and stayed there when he and Yuuri danced together. It felt as if his heart was being wrapped in an invisible blanket of all the good things he knew existed in the world and had been missing in his life all at once.

The discomfort he had been feeling for almost his entire life seemed so far at that moment. As he watched Yuuri Katsuki circle around that foreign rink with movements and steps he knew so well, he felt as if he had just found the answers to all of the questions he never knew how to ask.

Every single one of them had been answered through the soft moves and the music that Yuuri created with his own body. It was indeed like a collision of atoms happening right before his eyes. And he couldn’t look away.

His body felt warm. Comfortable.

His smile didn’t feel strained.

He felt as if he was experiencing one million things at once. But one of them was a simple enough emotion to name. It was _hope._

The war inside his mind and the battles that he had been fighting all of his life seemed to come to an end. For the first time, he felt as if the dread and the emptiness and the shallowness of it all could be overcome. He felt this time he could win the war.

His heart felt lighter than ever.

At that moment, Viktor didn’t know yet but he had found his missing puzzle piece.

That was his newfound strength.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I had to shift some events from their original place in the canon timeline so it would make more sense in this story, like the reference to JJ’s breakdown, but that could also be taken as an event that occurred earlier in his career and happened again in the canon timeline. I just have this headcanon that JJ secretly also struggles with anxiety and although he’s often better at hiding it than Yuuri, sometimes when he gets overwhelmed by the usual stress of competitions, it spills. He’s human after all. They all are.
> 
> Well then! That's it! Thanks for reading! Leave comments and kudos if you want and let me know your thoughts about this!
> 
> If you want to talk to me about YOI, come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/courtmagician) or on [tumblr](http://gold-on-ice.tumblr.com)


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